WireWall at Flood Expo 2019

Posted: 9 September 2019

The National Oceanography Centre (NOC) will be represented at the Flood Expo 2019 at the NEC in Birmingham (11–12 September 2019).

Find us on STAND D13.

The Flood Expo is the world’s largest exhibition and conference designed to help the most progressive flooding and coastal professionals and property owners discover the latest innovative products, services and strategies that transform the way flooding is predicted, prevented, and managed.

At this year’s event, the NOC will be showcasing the work delivered by the WireWall project. WireWall is an innovative and cost-effective system – developed by the NOC in partnership with HR Wallingford - to help optimise sea defence design and early-warning processes, reducing construction costs associated with over-engineering, and ultimately protecting coastal communities.

The impact of rising sea level on the flood hazard from sea defence overtopping means new coastal schemes need to remain resistant to changing wave and water levels over the next 100 years. The design of new coastal flood defences and the setting of tolerable hazard thresholds requires site-specific information of wave overtopping during storms of varying severity, which are combined with future sea level projections. By converting an existing, inexpensive wave measurement technology into an overtopping monitoring system (“WireWall”), field observations of wave-by-wave overtopping velocity and volumes will be made at the case study site Crosby, in the North West of England.